Two preposterous trials suggest something is seriously wrong at the Ontario Crown Attorney's Office

There are a lot of serious crimes that Toronto police, courts, and prosecutors have to deal with every day. Thousands of sexual offences were reported to police last year in Toronto, which also saw four murders just this past weekend, as gun violence has been mounting in the city since John Tory became its mayor in 2013.

Police investigations and prosecutions cost lots of taxpayer money and eat up resources. So when the Crown Attorney decides to pursue frivolous cases involving minor matters to make a social or political point, for a variety of reasons, the public has a right to demand an explanation.

Perhaps the most glaring of these recent abuses was the trial of Gregory Alan Elliott, in the notorious Twitter trial. Elliott faced a two year legal battle that cost taxpayers a mountain of cash for simply engaging in a twitter fight with a pair of radical feminists. Even the prosecution and police acknowledged that Elliott hadn't threatened or sexually harassed the two women who filed criminal charges against him. In fact, Elliott hadn't even violated twitter's terms of service. The exchanges between Elliott and his accusers show all the parties involved being obnoxious and insulting. But part of the grounds for the Crown's case against Elliott was, quite literally, that he had the temerity to use the same twitter hashtag as two strident feminists who had commenced an online campaign against him.  However the feminists in question have a very cozy relationship with some senior Toronto Police officials and with some leftist city councilors and left-wing media figures. 

You don't have to be Oliver Wendell Holmes to realize that such a prosecution not only didn't have a reasonable chance of conviction, but it was also idiotic and a political abuse of the justice system. Beyond that, Elliott's prosecution was a trial balloon for a state-sponsored attack on Canadians' free speech rights.  That abuse cost Ontario taxpayers figures that may reach into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more.

For different reasons, the trial of Jian Ghomeshi is equally troubling. Sexual assault is a deplorable crime and we have every reason as a society to punish it severely. Like many observers of the circumstances surrounding events leading to the Jian Ghomeshi trial, I find his behavior appalling.

Ghomeshi had been accused of hitting women with whom he was romantically linked and of harassing and abusing staff at the CBC.

He was an entitled prima donna, whose imperious arrogance was enabled by his superiors and the culture at the state broadcaster. In the wake of public revelations of his behavior,  Ghomeshi's former friends and colleagues, many of whom knew for years what he had been up to, scurried to denounce him faster than a Baath Party Official could implicate his own brother-in-law at one of Saddam Hussein's show trials.

One of the stranger aspects of the Ghomeshi controversy was how people immersed in sado-masochistic culture, including those in it who were the former CBC star's friends, became upset that he was casting their deranged sexual proclivities in a bad light.  How people who get pleasure from beating each other and who derive joy from having rods placed in their urethra could be made by Ghomeshi's case to look any more depraved than they already are escapes me. But that's another conversation. Because in the wake the of Ghomeshi's defense contention that the complainants consented to their abuse, sado-masochism as a lifestyle is also somewhat on trial.

When the story broke, Toronto's then-Police Chief, Bill Blair, cast a wide net to find more of Ghomeshi's victims. While there's no such thing as a "perfect victim," the Ghomeshi accusers turned out to be irredeemably flawed in that they kept vital information from police. Even if we give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they weren't deliberately lying in the witness box, Marie Henein, the defense counsel, proved that they weren't telling the truth about a great deal of their testimony.

Imagine if you went to police and told them someone hit and choked you. There's no documentation or medical evidence to support your allegation because you didn't think there was an injury significant enough that you needed to see a doctor about it. When they ask you when the attack happened, you tell them it took place 11 years ago, and it only just now occurred to you to press charges.

That's exactly the situation in the Ghomeshi case. The only reason the accusers in the Ghomeshi case weren't laughed out of the police station is because in the wake of so much bad publicity, the police and Crown attorney were actively seeking complaints against him. The reason these charges could go forward was that Ghomeshi was kissing the complainants prior to the alleged attacks, which elevated the charge from common assault, which has a statute of limitations, to sexual assault, which has none.

Sex crimes are horrible violations of the person, and often victims are frightened and intimidated by both their attacker and the legal process they have to endure to press charges. We have every reason to facilitate the laying of sexual assault charges involving rapes and sexual abuse. But am I the only one who thinks the charges in Ghomeshi's case are an abuse of the system?

In the months before the trial, twitter hashtags emerged, like #IbelieveLucy, in support of Ghomeshi accuser Lucy DeCoutere.

I believe Lucy too. I believe what she says about what Ghomeshi did, and I believe he's a violent, vile, manipulative creep. But I don't believe her beyond a reasonable doubt to the standard of a criminal conviction.  Hopefully, Ghomeshi will pay a penalty in that he will have lost the adulation and star status he so obviously craved. But that happened before the court case, and it's mystifying how the Crown could have decided to take such a weak case to trial.

So far, the only thing the Crown has proved beyond a reasonable doubt is that Ghomeshi is an asshole. But that's not an indictable offense.

In a criminal trial in which there is no physical evidence and the prosecution relies solely on the credibility of witness allegations, the defence has a right to challenge witness credibility and recollection. Indeed, in such a case, there can be very little other defense. Considering the glaring omissions including forgotten love letters and "romantic encounters" subsequent to the violence, the outlandish contradictions, and bizarre inconsistencies in the witnesses' testimonies, the Crown not only doesn't seem to have met the standard of proof necessary for conviction in a criminal case, but it's unlikely they would have won a civil case where just a preponderance of evidence is required. In the Ghomeshi trial, not only did all three complainants initiate contact with him after the alleged assaults, but they lied in court by first claiming under oath that they did not. It's also harder to be convincing that you aren't bringing charges against a famous person as an attention-seeking mechanism when you're actively courting publicists and the media in the wake of those charges. It's going to be next to impossible to convict someone on the basis of such witnesses who have annihilated their own credibility.

Much of the criticism of the trial proceedings come from people upset that the inconsistencies in the testimony, and in particular, the fact that the complainants continued to romantically engage with Ghomeshi after he abused them, is based on a misogynist belief that sexual assault victims "should behave a certain way."

But what's far more troubling than that is that those same critics seem to be advocating the total undermining of the foundation of our judicial system by creating a class of crime where a proper defense cannot be conducted and where a mere accusation can be grounds for criminal conviction. That the Crown would facilitate such a case at public expense is a disgrace.

There are some lessons to be learned from the Ghomeshi trial. Rather than spending time telling society that they need to accept any degree of incomprehensible behaviour from sexual assault victims, perhaps we need to tell sexual assault victims that they need to behave in some measure like rational people.

If a man beats you up, then you should not continue to date him. That doesn't excuse the violence in any way. But it also means that if you're an adult and aggressively pursue a romantic relationship with someone who abuses you, people might reasonably conclude you are an eager, voluntary participant in the abuse.

That may sound harsh. But to the accusers and taxpayers who funded the farce in court the last few days, not nearly so harsh as the Not Guilty verdict the judge is likely to render in the Ghomeshi trial.

Poll says Canadians think justice system is too lenient, so Liberals, NDP and the CBC say Canadians must be reeducated

In a move that is entirely typical of the delusional arrogance of Canada's leftist political establishment, their response to a poll indicating that a majority of Canadians have lost confidence in the justice system is not to fix the system but to want to reeducate the pubic to be satisfied with it.

An internal study conducted by the Justice Department and obtained by the Canadian Press  "concludes the public believes victims are too often ignored in the justice system, and that prisons do a poor job of rehabilitating offenders."

The Conservative government has committed to introducing legislation to impose tougher mandatory sentences for crimes such as sex offenses against children and for the system to place more importance on the right of victims. But Opposition critics in the NDP and Liberal parties, as well as some federal bureaucrats argue that declining rates of crime in some areas mean that Canadians need to be "educated" about the virtues of the existing system.

These opposition critics probably do not live in crime-ridden areas of Toronto, however one or two may represent areas of Vancouver where during elections, junkies are reportedly given sandwiches   and are bussed to polling stations with instructions to cast a vote for a particular candidate.

Remarkably, in its usual effort to spin the news to its own biases, the CBC reported this story as "Canadians think fix for courts lies in education, report says" implying it it is not a small number of politicians and bureaucrats and CBC wonks who think that, but the majority of Canadians who in fact hold the opposite view.

This CBC headline implies the exact opposite of the study's conclusion

The CBC's incompetent, racist coverage of aboriginal issues

Conrad Black and Carol Off interview - which one is the deficient journalist?

The pathological hysterics at The Toronto Star have characterized this as "Carol Off sends Conrad Black to journalism school"

It's more like a biased interviewer who doesn't understand the nature of the type of program Black does, trying to prove her points and making herself look fairly stupid and belligerent in the process.

What's laughable is a CBC host trying to chastise Black for not challenging a guest who may have made an inaccurate statement. What makes it funny is the statement was about something that Ford says happened to him, while the state-funded broadcaster routinely allows not only its guests, but its own journalists to broadcast completely false, slanderous assertions involving the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

You can listen to the interview at THIS LINK and judge for yourself.

Matt Gurney: ‘Supporting documents’ for CBC’s bombshell NSA scoop don’t support the story much at all

...There is no proof of “widespread surveillance.” Clearly, an operation was being conducted. But no hint whatsoever is given to how widespread the surveillance was, or was not. You can’t tell from this document.

Further, there is nothing to back the CBC’s claim that the “spying at the Toronto summit in 2010 fits a pattern of economic and political espionage by [the NSA] and its partners [in Canada].” Beyond the generic statement that the NSA “is actively assisting executive protection and event security, and providing support to policymakers,” the document contains nothing approximating an even semi-complete operational plan or list of objectives that could then be fitted into any broader pattern. The closest we come is a generic list of services the NSA could offer, and the document itself notes the list is not exhaustive.

Indeed, it’s only clear upon rereading how little information the Nov. 27 report ever really claimed came from the NSA documents...

Read it all at NATIONAL POST 

CBC News - afraid to offend supporters of terrorism, but happy to bash conservatives

Compare and contrast these two responses from the CBC Ombudsman:

Talking about terrorists and terrorism

The complainant, Bruce McMinn, questioned why CBC reports on the attack and siege of the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya did not refer to the perpetrators as terrorists or the attack as a “terrorist attack.” 

...MANAGEMENT RESPONSE 

Jennifer Harwood, Managing Editor of CBC News Network, replied to your concerns. She explained that it is a long standing practice to use the words “terrorist” or “terrorism” when they are attributed by others. She explained that the practice is “to describe the act or individual, as ‘bomber’, ‘militant’, ‘extremist’ or ‘gunman,’ for instance, and let the viewer, reader or listener make his own judgment about the nature of the event. The purpose of journalism is to reflect reality, to inform, and to give viewers and listeners enough information so that they can reach their own conclusions.” 

She pointed out that the use of the word can be highly politicized and therefore it is preferable that there be a consistent practice to be as specific as possible in describing an event without labelling it. She pointed out that many other leading news organizations also avoid using the words “on their own as a form of description without attribution.” CBC has been following this practice for over 30 years.

Here's a tip that one might think a "journalist" or someone in charge of oversight for a News Deprtment might be aware: "terrorism" is a word. Words have definitions. If a person or persons act meets the definition of "terrorism" than the act is terrorism and the perpetrator is a terrorist.

noun

1.

the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce,especially for political purposes.

It is very clear that what happened at the Westgate Mall was terrorism. But the CBC didn't mention that there are a number of supporters of terrorism among the network's supporters, so offending them is something they wouldn't want to do.

On the other hand conservatives aren't, as a rule, big fans of the CBC, so who cares if the CBC exhibits blatant bias against them? 

Twerking is not a four-letter word

..COMPLAINT 

You felt an analysis column by Neil Macdonald about the politics of the shutdown of the United States government was highly inappropriate. The column, which you referred to as a diatribe, is titled: “Analysis: Republicans twerking for the cameras like Miley Cyrus.” You felt that Mr. Macdonald was “engaging in obscenities” because he used the word twerking and he compared Republicans to the singer Miley Cyrus. You cited these lines from the piece to make the case that the essay contained “mean-spirited, obscene language”:

“Like the utterly shameless woman-child Miley Cyrus, modern Washington understands the mortal risk of banality, and so occasionally needs to make a singular spectacle of itself.
Republicans are doing that now: sticking out their tongue, grabbing their crotch, waggling their rear end and ‘twerking’ for the cameras, to use that awful neologism.”

You said the essay indulged in “rather hysterical name-calling, instead of putting forth rational arguments.”

Aside from the language, you objected to the placement of the essay on the news home page. You said it was the only reference to the situation in Washington you saw on the page. There were no “objective” articles listed, so that you might check on the latest news of the day. “So instead of informing Canadians as to what is happening in Washington, we are treated to an opinion essay lobbing obscene insults at Republicans.” You felt this harmed “CBC’s supposed journalistic integrity.”

MANAGEMENT RESPONSE

The Senior Director of Digital Media, Marissa Nelson, responded to your concerns. She told you that CBC News had been following events in Washington over a period of time and that there was extensive “traditional news coverage”

h/t David M

Liars or Idiots? Take your pick to describe John Greyson and Tarek Loubani on their return to Canada

It sounds like it could be a scene from some of the incoherent, taxpayer-financed, homoerotic drivel that John Greyson tries to pass off as "film making." Two dark, lean men, after release from the sweaty confinement of a crowded prison cell, find themselves adulated to the point where they have to towel each other off following a series of sloppy tongue-baths from fawning interviewers.

That scenario did not spring from another dreadful John Greyson screenplay. It was instead scripted by the shallow, uncritical, vapid personalities in Toronto's mainstream news media as they fell over one another to verbally fellate the two Canadians who were imprisoned in Egypt as a result of their own recklessness and stupidity.

Over the last few days, John Greyson and Tarek Loubani have presented to the media what appears to be a well-rehearsed explanation for their presence at a Muslim Brotherhood riot in Egypt that resulted in their arrest, and an unconvincing depiction of themselves as "social justice" activists and humanitarians. Sickeningly, the open-mouthed "journalists" at the CBC and CTV gobbled with absolute credulity everything the pair of extremists offered.

Fortunately, most Canadians are a good deal more insightful than their "intellectual and moral superiors" in mainstream news media who decide what the news is and how it should be carefully filtered to the lesser, non-media public.  And a good thing too, because Greyson and Loubani's tale of their Egyptian woes, just like any other John Greyson script, doesn't make any sense.

When asked what they were doing at the protest that led to their arrest, Loubani and Greyson say that they "misread" the situation and that they thought the protest wouldn't have turned violent.

The protest they decided to "observe," the one that they got caught up in and were arrested for attending, was a declared Muslim Brotherhood "Day of Rage." So Lubani and Greyson would have us believe they thought they would participate in that as-of-yet unheard of phenomenon, a non-violent Muslim Brotherhood Day of Rage??

It seems like a particular type of journalist was chosen to conduct interviews with the fanatical duo. Not all journalists at the CBC and CTV are bubbleheads, but did any of the ones selected to question Loubani or Greyson challenge them on what should have been an obvious canyon of implausibility in their tale?

Not a single one.

One can only speculate whether some prearranged agreement with the media to whom they spoke stipulated that any challenge to their unlikely story was off the table.

It's well worth noting that if Greyson and Loubani are to be taken at their word, it means that pair who are fixated with the issue of Israel and Palestine do not, by their own admission, know much about the geopolitical situation in the region around the subject of their pathological obsession.

That's very, very significant.

Because the Israeli/Palestinian dilemma cannot be rationally understood outside the wider context of the much larger Arab/Israeli conflict. So evidently, the idiots Greyson and Loubani have embroiled themselves in a campaign to demonize Israel without any comprehensive understanding of the issue as a whole. That would make them completely typical of most of the vapid characters so embroiled in anti-Israel campaigns.

Oh, wait! As they have insisted from interview to interview, Greyson and Loubani are pro-Palestine but most definitely are not anti-Israel.

In that, they are telling another lie.

The only apparent method Greyson has ever chosen to promote Palestinian national self determination is to try to destroy Jewish national self-determination.

Short of murdering an Israeli child by bashing its head against a rock, a method of activism favored by some highly regarded "pro-Palestinians," it makes one wonder where that enigmatic line is that separates what a deluded character like Greyson does from being anti-Israel. He is a leader of  the depraved bigots calling themselves Queers Against Israeli Apartheid that promote the vile slander accusing Israel of being an apartheid state. He hypocritically subjects Israel to double standards and a form of vilification he reserves for no other nation in the world. Greyson has supported a boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign against Israel that many in even the genuine pro-Palestinian camp regard as transcending the line between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.

Exactly what Greyson has done for Palestinians that does not exclusively manifest as demonization of the Jewish State is something more elusive than the Loch Ness Monster, which at least some people claim to have seen.

Though the CBC and CTV reporters were either too uninformed or star-struck to refute any of the preposterous answers, anyone who bothers to check facts will learn that Greyson and Loubani provided their own undoing.

Loubani's assertion that aid is desperately needed in Gaza is outright ridiculous.

The "desperate" need for aid to Gaza that a lie that narcissistic activists use to justify their adventures as low-risk conflict tourists. Gaza has markets abundantly filled with a variety of foods, luxury malls, fine-dining restaurants and five-star hotels. There is abject poverty in Gaza, but there is also abject poverty in Chicago, Bangladesh and Guadalajara. And unlike impoverished Asians and Latin Americans, the Palestinians are the second highest per capita recipients of international aid in the world, next only to the war-torn Republic of Congo. As far as the "starving Palestinians" go, it is a well known medical fact of which Loubani is or should be aware that Palestinians, including in Gaza, have one of the highest global obesity rates.

Loubani claims Gaza is under "occupation." The occupation ended in 2005. Instead of using the removal of Israeli troops as an opportunity to build a peaceful and prosperous society, Gaza responded with an incessant barrage of missiles against Israel, which have provoked periodic responses. The "siege" Loubani claims Gaza is under is actually a blockade, which would end if the Palestinians stopped shelling Israel and unequivocally recognized its right to exist.

But Gaza, under its rulers Hamas, has done neither of those things as they steadfastly cling to their anti-Semitic Charter which calls for the genocide of Jews. Among its hateful degeneracy which borders on the comical, Hamas actually posits international conspiracies between Jews, Freemasons and (believe it or not!) The Rotary and Lions Clubs.

There is so much that is untrue and absurd in Greyson and Loubani's account, it could take enough space to fill a dozen blog postings.

The most regrettable part of this is that it is to blogs and only one of our national media organizations one needs to look to find the truth about those radicals, since they won't even be asked hard questions by the so-called journalists at Canada's tax-funded state broadcaster.

Calling "bullshit" on the CBC's lies and activist journalism in support of Loubani & Greyson

Have you ever heard a tale from a pathological liar that is so mind-numbingly stupid you wondered why they even bothered to tell it?

You know, one of those lies that is so obviously, demonstrably untrue that by telling it to you, they either have complete contempt for your intelligence or are such idiots that they don't realize that their attempt at deception is completely transparent.

That's what I heard yesterday night from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation about their rationale for concealing the fanatical activist and lawbreaking history of the two Canadians, Tarek Loubani and John Greyson, who had been imprisoned in Egypt since August.

In his report yesterday about the return of the two Muslim Brotherhood-enabling radicals to Canada, CBC reporter Ron Charles treated viewers to this little gem:

`While the men were in jail, great care was taken back home not to reveal too much about them for their safety. Few people mentioned that Greyson is a prominent Gay filmmaker, pro-Palestinian activist and member of a controversial group called Queers Against Israeli Apartheid. He was to have been part of a failed flotilla of boats carrying activists in 2011 intending to breech Israel`s blockade of Gaza.``

Think for a moment how incredibly facile that CBC assertion sounds.

Greyson is an openly Gay York University professor who has gobbled up vast sums from the Canada Council and other tax-funded bodies to make his homoerotic pseudo-artistic trash. He even has a long-standing Wikipedia entry that highlights his so-called "filmmaking" career as well as his radical anti-Israel activism.

Tarek Loubani has a history of lawbreaking and involvement with the terror-supporting group International Solidarity Movement that is easily accessible on the Internet.

Greyson has a long history of Hamas-enabling fanaticism

Beyond that, bloggers and Sun News were reporting on the truth about Greyson and Loubani`s background from Day 1 of their arrest.

So for the CBC`s explanation for why they covered up Greyson and Loubani`s background to be plausible, it would mean that Egyptian prosecutors were incapable of typing the two men`s names into a Google search.

What then is the real reason media like the CBC and the Toronto Star hid the background of Greyson and Loubani, not from Egyptians, but from their fellow Canadians who get their news from those sources?

The answer is obvious. The left-wing media are sympathetic to Greyson and Loubani. The CBC and the Star, for the last two months, have been manipulating Canadians into thinking the duo were "innocents" caught "in the wrong place at the wrong time" to contrive pressure on our, not the Egyptian government, to act on their behalf.

Greyson in particular is part of a narrow clique of Canada Council darlings including overrated Canadian media personalities Atom Egoyan and Sarah Polley. The CBC and Star were more than happy to manipulate the news and hide facts from the public to keep their friends happy and agitate for the public to pressure the government to act on behalf of two fanatics.

Don't get me wrong, I too thought the government should have advocated for them to receive just treatment in Egypt and even made an appeal for them (sarcastic as it may have been).

But I knew who John Greyson and Tarek Loubami really were.

We now know that Greyson and Loubani's story is just that, a story, and it's full of holes.

Why were they breaking curfew to attend a banned Muslim Brotherhood rally that turned into a violent riot?

Why were they carrying surveillance equipment, including mini-drones, and offering the implausible excuse that it was for the transport of medical supplies?

Whereas the CBC and The Toronto Star didn't want anyone to find that out.

This goes to show that what we see from the CBC is not fair, objective, unbiased journalism, but activism pretending to be reporting.

Now that Margaret Wente at the Globe and Mail has finally broken ranks and gave a more detailed account of the duo's past, and enough Canadians have seen reports from Sun Media and elsewhere, people are getting the idea of what was going on and there is a backlash.

It would be nice if that backlash was strong enough to get the CBC to actually do its job properly, or as an impetus for it to be sold to someone who could see that it does.

A pathetic mainstream media that refuses to call terrorism by its name

Pro-Muslim Brotherhood protest in Calgary blames MidEast strife on "Americans and Zionists." CBC omits that part from its coverage

In the coverage of the event that tells what actually happened, Jonathan Halevi who speaks Arabic, reports:

Tharwat Muhammad Anwar Nafi’ (ثروت محمد انور نافع), a member of the dissolved Egyptian Upper house, the Shura Council, also attended the protest. In his fiery speech he argued that Israel and the US are behind the military coup and the turmoil in the Middle East.

Here’s an excerpt of his speech: “The Egyptian armed forces, designated to protect the people, are now carrying out massacres in Egypt under the auspices of Israel and USA. What happened in Egypt and what is happening in all Arab states is being done under the auspices of the Zionists and Americans to crack down on any possible democracy or any democratic thinking in the Middle East.” 

The CBC told a different tale:



h-t Blazing Cat Fur

Rick McGinnis reviews Brian Lilley's CBC Exposed

...The corporation’s cavalier use of public money is the meat of Lilley’s book, as he details how the CBC has used its billion-plus dollar budget to expand beyond its mandate and set up a digital music service, competing unnecessarily with private businesses in the same over-serviced market. They’ve also dipped into their funding to finance campaigns against the adversaries they’ve created among private broadcasters and cable companies, as well as paying for a private party at the Toronto International Film Festival to fete George Stromboulopoulos, host of a CBC chat show and one of the broadcaster’s stars. (As I write this, Stromboulopoulos has announced his move to US cable news channel CNN, whose own viewership has been shrinking to approach the same cozy numbers George will have enjoyed at the CBC.)

While funding all of this and more with taxpayer money, the CBC has been pointedly unwilling to share details of its own spending, pleading the need for journalistic immunity and protection from their competitors in the media marketplace. Even when ordered to make their operations more transparent by the government that acts as a conduit for their funding, they’ve delayed and obfuscated at nearly every opportunity, a tactic embodied by CBC president Hubert Lacroix, who arrogantly told a House of Commons committee in 2011 that “we believe that only a judge should have the right to demand the disclosure of information that relates to our creative activities or is journalistic or program related.”

Your tax dollars paying for CBC anti-Israel bias

The CBC's Neil MacDonald doesn't like Israel.

He has every right to his opinion.

But the tax-funded Canadian Broadcast Corporation employs the least talented of the MacDonald brothers as a journalist, not as a pundit to pontificate about his inane biases against the middle east's only liberal democracy.

However that is what he has done time and time again.

As in the past, MacDonald has troubled himself to inject his detestation for Israel in a report that has absolutely nothing to do with the Jewish state titled: How to tell a slap on the ass from rape.

Perhaps, like other gauche CBC "journalists" more interested in reporting their opinions than the news, he is jockeying for a new job at al Jazeera.

But what MacDonald is currently doing has no business being paid for out of Canadian taxes.

You can contact CBC Editor-in-Chief Jennifer McGuire at Jennifer.McGuire@CBC.CA  and let her know how you feel about your public funds paying for MacDonald's personal smear campaign.

Honest Reporting Canada has the details:

In an analysis piece published on the CBC’s website on June 6,Macdonald included the following irrelevant smear against Israel and Canadian support for the Jewish state (emphasis added): “In Canada, do Stephen Harper and his most partisan supporters actually think, down deep, that Israel may actually bear some of the blame for its troubles with the Palestinians?”  

Apart from being gratuitous, this question disguised personal opinion as news by phrasing declarative statements into questions.  

There is no evidence to substantiate claims that Canada’s Prime Minister and his “most partisan supporters” deep down assign blame to Israel for the impasses and quarrels with the Palestinians, but MacDonald has no problem raising this question that serves to malign Israel, Canadian support for the Jewish state, and which exonerates Palestinian transgressions and elevates the Palestinian cause. 

But wait, aren’t CBC journalists tasked to be politically neutral and to embargo their personal views in their professional work? Macdonald’s apparent preoccupation with Israel seems to be the exception to the rule allowing him to use CBC resources to attack Israel, time and again.

More at Honest Reporting Canada 

Too stupid to be Prime Minister: Justin Trudeau gets asked a non-softball question and assumes it's from Sun News

Justin "le Dauphin" Trudeau was asked whether he thinks it's wise to talk to the Taliban by a CBC news reporter on Parliament Hill. Obviously not used to getting asked serious questions by the Canada's consensus media, Trudeau immediately assumed the reporter was from Sun News.

Trudeau then avoided giving a straight answer to the question. But in fairness, it's Justin Trudeau we're talking about, so maybe he didn't understand it.

Canada's mainstream media has given up its role as journalists to work as Liberal Party press agents

Palestinians to Canada: We condemn you!.. Now give us more charity!

Checking in on my twitter feed this morning, I couldn't help get a chuckle out of back-to-back tweets from CBC Top Stories. The first had Derek Stoffel reporting that Canada had committed $25 million in new funds (on top of the $300 million already committed) to the Palestinian Authority.

The second had Sasa Petricic reporting that the Foreign Minister of that same Palestinian Authority was condemning Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird for siding with Israel by having a meeting in the Israeli capitol.

I'm still waiting for the CBC tweet that says the Palestinians are so offended that they are going to turn down the handout from Canada's taxpayers.

Lunatic leftist group says CBC boss Hubert Lacroix is part of an evil Conservative Party conspiracy

Really? Hubert Lacriox???

From LeadNow's website

The loons at Leadnow.ca, the organization that brought you enough BS about the "Robocalls Scandal" to fertilize all of Saskatchewan, have completely gone off the deep end.


h/t Matthew L

Canada's useful idiots of Jihad

Canadians are on their guard against the growing Islamist threat. After all, the last month alone brought the Boston Marathon bombing, and arrests in Canada of suspected Iranian-linked al-Qaeda bomb-plotters targeting Canada-US passenger train routes. Add to that, repeated stories of Islamist radicalism in Canadian neighborhoods and young Canadian Muslim terrorists abroad.

Against this backdrop, the last thing to be expected at this fraught time would be a public event in Canada's capital showcasing a radical Islamist, boasting a master of ceremonies from the tax-funded Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, involving a respected mental health foundation, and including the wife of the highest office-holder in the land. Nonetheless, this is what is being planned for Ottawa, this weekend.

Read the rest of the article by David Harris HERE

h/t Blazing Cat Fur

Motives behind Gypsy anti-Sun News demonstration

Somewhere between "minuscule" and "small" would describe the size of the demonstration held outside Canadian Radio-Television Telecommunications Commission offices in Toronto last Tuesday by the Roma community protesting against the Sun News Network. There were about two dozen people in total, including speakers which included "social activist" Bernie Farber and former Liberal MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj.

There is no defending the content of Ezra Levant's tirade against the Gypsy community last year. Sun News issued an apology almost immediately after its broadcast and Levant himself apologized in great length and detail last month. 

Hopefully, that would have put the unfortunate episode in the past, but the issue has become less a cause about offense to the Gypsy community than as a spear opponents of Sun News would use to strike at the fledgling conservative news network.

That motive was so transparent that aspects of the protest took on an element of self-parody. Among the complaints by Roma Community Centre Director Gina Csányi-Robah was that Sun News continues to use the "offensive" term Gypsy to describe the Roma people. Making that claim ridiculous, following her speech, the event's Master of Ceremonies announced a performance by two musicians from the group "The Gypsy Lions."

A definitive monograph on the Gypsies by University of British Colombia Sociology Professor Werner Cohn refutes much of what Ms Csányi-Robah, who was born in Canada, alleges. Cohn is extremely sympathetic to the Gypsies, whose culture he studied in great detail and he dispels dangerous slanders against them such as the allegation of Gypsies "stealing children."

But he also points out that the Gypsies are in fact a number of peoples, most of whom self-identify as Gypsies and of whom the Roma (or Rom or Romani) are just one group.

Bernie Farber's interest in the Roma community is curious. He undoubtedly is sincere in advocating for people he considers oppressed. But it is remarkably convenient for him that in agitating against Sun News, he can attack people with whom he has an apparent ax to grind. As Farber pointed out in an interview on CBC Radio's As It Happens, there is a long history and no love lost between him and Ezra Levant.

That interview is fascinating in a number of ways. The biases and abuses of the state-funded Canadian Broadcasting Corporation have been a frequent Sun TV target that could possibly even be described as an obsession, and Levant's Gypsy faux pas is being seized upon as an opportunity for payback.

In the interview, Farber and As it Happens host Carol Off compete with each other to malign Sun News and Levant, working themselves into a crescendo of bile. Off is famous for her lack of emotional allocution. For those unfamiliar with her vocal style, imagine a lobotomized, female Ben Stein on Ritalin and that will give you an idea of her bland droning.  But on this occasion her disdain for Sun News was so evident that she actually conveyed feeling in her voice.

But that feeling was rife with hypocrisy. As blogger Blogwrath has noted, the CBC has broadcast anti-Gypsy programming that invokes the most hateful stereotypes they face.

At the protest, former Liberal MP Wrzesnewskyj betrayed himself as an intellectual featherweight by comparing Ezra Levant to the unapologetic neo-Nazi Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel. 

Wrzesnewskyj was one of the most anti-Israel MPs in the House of Commons while he sat there. He co-authored a heavily biased anti-Israel report along with pathologically anti-Israel NDP MP Libby Davies.  On his trip to make that report, he was accompanied by Sea Hitler organizer Ehab Lotayef  and a group of fanatics who routinely support and participate in the "Israeli Apartheid Week" hate-fest that has been condemned by the last two federal Liberal Party leaders, Ignatieff and Rae. Wrzesnewskyj was compelled to resign as Liberal Foreign Affairs Critic in 2006 after he advocated that Canada engage with the terror group Hezbollah.

Ms Csányi-Robah has her own odd history of engaging, on behalf of her community, with nefarious groups. She has aligned the Roma cause with radical fanatics who want an end to Israel as a Jewish state. That association has shamed a number of Canadian Roma who wanted to distance themselves from such hate. That may partially account for why she was unable to garner much support from her own community for her Tuesday protest. 

It might strike some as remarkable that former Canadian Jewish Congress boss Farber would be part of such an event.  But Farber has been remaking himself recently since losing his role as one of  Canada's top "Official Jews." He has been using his twitter account to promote links from anti-Israel hysterics such as blogger Dr. Dawg, and the vehemently anti-Israel website rabble.ca. 

As blogger Sassywire points out, many in the Jewish community have been urging Farber for some time to come to protests against anti-Semites and Islamist hate-mongers seeking Israel's elimination, but he has not notably done so. Ironically the protest he makes a point of attending, he does so alongside people associated with anti-Israel causes to condemn the most pro-Israel media outlet in Canada.

In the end, it doesn't take much examination to get the impression that, like most people opposed to free speech, the protesters against Sun News appear less interested in suppressing hatred than they do in suppressing points of view that differ from theirs. 

Does the State Broadcaster finally get it?! A CBC Report on Canadians involved with Islamic terror

Canada is recommitting itself to fighting homegrown Islamic extremism following a CBC News investigation that revealed at least two Canadians were involved in an al-Qaeda-linked attack on an Algerian gas plant in January that left dozens of refinery workers dead.

London, Ont. natives Xristos Katsiroubas, 22, and Ali Medlej, who was believed to be about 24, were two of the militants responsible for the attack, a CBC News investigation confirmed.

According to the web site of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), "with the exception of the United States, there are more terrorist groups active in Canada today than in any other country in the world."

More here




h/t Marvin W.

Nominate Brian Lilley`s CBC Exposed for the CBC Book Awards

That`ll show 'em!

Brian Lilley's book covers waste and corruption that Canadian taxpayers subsidize to the tune of one billion dollars each year.

You can nominate CBC Exposed as best Canadian book of 2012 through THIS LINK. (UPDATE  - March 28 - the CBC has killed the nomination page - it had 37 comments - 34 of them nominating CBC Exposed and they had hundreds of "plus ratings")

Copies of the book can be purchased through Amazon and Chapters Indigo.


h/t Matthew L.










Update: and for those interested in doing more good works, you can find out about sponsoring a ride for cancer research here

UPDATE 2: The Ceeb website has closed comments on the awards...not hard to figure out why.